Company Man
by Sleydo
Summary: Eliot Saunders used to be a cop. Now he's a businessman, of a kind. The 'hunts-demons-for-a-private-corporation' kind. But this is a corporation bringing whole new levels of meaning to the phrase 'cut-throat business model'...R/R? Note:Hezazel Azazel. Oop
1. Working Man

Twenty years ago...

_Eliot Sanders is in a city in New Zealand, down in one of the suburbs. It's 10 pm local time—he's been here three days and he still tries to think of it as local time to downplay the inevitable jet lag he knows he'll get going back to the U.S. And despite the cold anticipatory dread that's built up in his stomach over the course of the stakeout, he's in a good mood. His partner, Ray Trissome, is off monitoring another house for one thing, leaving him alone with some quiet for the first time in several months of working together. And, better luck yet, he's managed to steal the car away from Ray for the night. The company's budget for operatives can be a little low depending on the expenditure, and the fact that the car rental is covered under both the 'transport' and 'accomodation' categories of their meager budget came as little surprise to either of them. So when the call came down the night before that there were now two targets to stake out, they flipped a coin for who'd get the car and who'd have to sit on a park bench in front of the other house pretending they were homeless. _

_And so Eliot is sitting in the driver's seat on the other side of the street from the target's house, legs up on the dash, re-reading the mission intel report out of boredom. He's smoking, too, a habit which bothers his partner. Ray always tells him that those things would kill him someday, but given that most things in their job would probably kill them someday Eliot doesn't see the logic there. The habit's comforting for him anyway, a little slice of normality he never found much of after he quit his job as a cop._

_He's about halfway through the mission intel report for the third time of the night. The page he's currently on is marked 'HEZAZEL, AKA 'YELLOW-EYES''. There are pictures of various people, interwoven between the knots of text like flies in a web. There are only two similarities between the people that Eliot can see. The first is that every single person, either by trick of the light or some stranger reason, has irises of a sickly golden-yellow color, as of hot flame or the dried-out scales of certain snakes. The second is that, to the best of Eliot's knowledge, every single one is now dead._

_The page he is currently reading has the headings 'POSSIBLE OBJECTIVES' and 'POTENTIAL TARGETS'. He is halfway down the page, making little notes in the margins about the more important points, when the northerly room on the second level of the house on the other side of the street explodes into flames._

_Eliot knows his job. He only takes a second to feel for the gun and the canteen of water he's already made sure are in his coat before he's sprinting across the street towards the house. The door's locked, but it's the work of a second to blast off the lock and head in. He darts down the hallway, takes a right, and then shoots up the stairwell taking two steps at a time—he finished memorizing the house's design two nights ago. But he's careful to stay silent, and his caution is rewarded when he hears footsteps on the second level, from the northerly room. For a moment the fear freezes him entirely, and he stays still halfway up the stairs, utterly exposed._

_Time seems to slow for a moment, and the whole situation sinks in. It's utterly clear that a nice family once lived here—Eliot ruthlessly slots in the past tense to keep himself from becoming too distracted at the devastation. Portraits of family members on the walls. Mom and Dad's wedding photos. His eye catches on the lovingly-framed picture of a newborn baby, with the title 'Irene' in flowery little letters beneath. _

_Even with his attempts at detachment he feels his pulse race a little, and the rising shock and nausea at what's been done here, and shuts it all down just in time. He can't afford to feel anything right now. Eliot Sanders, one-time cop and now something altogether stranger, restarts his sprint and gallops without further pause into the southerly room. The target is where two days' worth of stakeout has confirmed—little Irene is nestled still in her crib, blessedly still asleep. _Thank God for small favors, _Eliot thinks, and scoops up the child into his arms. She still does not stir, and for a moment the distant part of him that still feels knows only terror. Then her eyelids flutter a little, and Eliot calms. _

_The fire had grown more than a little while Eliot's back was turned, and the hallway is now a blazing inferno. But there is a soft lawn just twenty feet down, and a pane of glass large enough to fit through if he were to smash it. Eliot's had worse pain than the results of a landing like that. He glances around for a blunt object, grabs the crib, and smashes it against the glass until it spiders and shatters away, keeping little Irene covered and safe in his other arm. He is about to jump through when he hears a polite cough behind him. _

_The fire has grown more than a little while Eliot's back was turned, and the bedroom door is smoking charnel and flame. But there is a figure standing there, backlit by the light of the destruction. Eliot immediately ID's the mostly-intact face as that of the child's father. But the eyes... it could just be reflections of the color of the flames, but there's a sickly yellow that seems to spill out of them. And of course, there is the fact that nobody with second and third-degree burns all over their body can be expected to get up and walk around afterwards. _

_Hezazel turns the father's face into a carnivore's grin. "Oh, thank Heaven you found her," he says, stalking forward until he's only a couple feet away. "I was worried she'd been hurt in this awful blaze. Just pass my child back and we'll get out of here."_

_Eliot realizes with only a little relief that Hezazel seems to think he's a know-nothing hapless good Samaritan. He turns so that the arm holding Irene is facing Hezazel, but does not reach out to offer her over. He decides to play the role of 'heroic rescuer' to the hilt, and buy whatever time that offers. "Tell you what sir, I'll take her out of here safely. You look a little hurt." _

_Hezazel turns his head, regarding him carefully. "You know what, sport, I think that's a good idea." He nods, seemingly thinking it over. "Yeah, a very good idea at that. Who knows, I might not even make it out of here alive." He makes a little self-deprecating laugh, and suddenly Eliot realizes in one delirious moment that if he doesn't say or do anything too extreme Hezazel is going to just let him go. "Just promise me that if I die you'll take care of my child."_

_And then something inside Eliot snaps. "Not your child," he says, and lashes out with the arm that isn't holding Irene. He's already uncorked the top of the bottle in preparation, and the holy water bursts out and smashes into Hezazel's face. The water erupts into steam from the moment it hits, and Hezazel backs away clawing at his face and screaming. But Eliot is already flying, out through the window and slamming hard into the earth. He hits just the way he means to, and when he gets back up he feels the flaring line of pain down his left forearm and along his back that tells him he's done the roll right. Irene is unharmed. _

_Eliot gets up, expecting to see Hezazel bearing down in his stolen body, but the demon is only leaning out of the window, one hand on the frame as though scared of looks Eliot over for a few long seconds, tilting his head as though mystified. He finally settles for a polite smile, and then straightens his back with dignity and walks back into the inferno. Eliot knows that sometime soon there will be a cloud of oily black smoke adding to the smoke caused by the fire._

_From there, it's a simple matter for Eliot. He waits until his heart has stopped trying to leap out of his chest and murder him, and then gets up. He walks to his car with the nonchalance of a man that knows two things: at this very moment there would be at least one person watching him walk away from a suspicious fire and into his car, and that every scrap of evidence that could tell investigators what he's been doing for the past three days will have evaporated by morning like fairy dust. He gets in and speeds away into the anonymous night. _

_Calls in a mission report from a parking lot a few kilometers down the road._

_Fills in his partner about the mission results in a second call immediately afterward, and starts driving down the road to pick him up. _

_Somewhat more incongruous is the purchase about half an hour later in a 24-hour grocery store for diapers and baby food._


	2. Out of the Cradle

Something was scraping across his eardrums like sandpaper.

"Mhm," said Eliot. He rolled himself up even further in the bed's quilts and pulled a pillow over his head.

It happened again. "Go away," Eliot told the phone. "It's frigging Saturday. You know I don't work weekends."

The phone remained obstinate. After the fourth ring, Eliot swore and pulled it off its hook. "What?"

"Morning to you too, buddy."

"Oh. Ray. Go away."

"Easy. I know how you hate it when this stuff cuts into your free time, but this is important."

"Then just tell me about it. Then I can say no, and go back to sleep."

"Eliot, it's a demon."

"No."

"He's in Estevan, Eliot. That's in Saskatchewan, just twenty miles out. He's—"

"Know exactly where frigging Estevan is—"

" Let's just ice this guy. You know it'll be good fun."

Let one of the young guys handle it."

On the other side of the phone, Ray Trissome cleared his throat. "Not to get your hopes up or anything, but I think it might be Yellow-Eyes himself."

There was no hesitation, no time wasted spent stretching or thinking or pulling himself out of bed. There was only Eliot Saunders half-asleep, wrapped up in his bedsheets and hugging the phone against one side of his head and a pillow to the other, and then Eliot Saunders sitting bolt upright, yanking the sheets off of himself with one hand and pulling his gun holster off the waist-high cabinet next to him with the other.

"What's up?" he said as he began pulling his body armor out of the closet.

"A demon, possibly Yellow-Eyes, has been ID'd by one of the company sensitives as being in Estevan," said Ray simply. "I told you. Get some coffee in you already."

"Where within a couple blocks? Where's he heading? What the hell is he doing in Estevan?"

"Dunno. Dunno. Dunno."

"Great," said Eliot. He checked the holy symbols etched into the hard kevlar pieces were unobstructed and clean, and then strapped the armor around his bare legs. "I'm going to take a little while to get ready over here. You're good to go, right?"

"Eliot, I'm sitting in the frigging _car _outside your _house._ You might recognise it. It's the one that I own."

Eliot stopped fiddling with the chest pieces, stepped over to the window, and pulled the curtains aside barely enough to see. There was a young-looking dark blue Ford Mustang parked in front of his house. A moderately tall black man who looked more than slightly older waved back at him frantically, grinning.

"Yeah, I see you too," said Eliot, and let the curtain fall shut. "Give me some time to get some clothes on—" He finished tidying the jacket and shirt he'd pulled on so that they didn't look like they were hiding body armor—"and then I'll get Irene up."

"Eh, I don't think you'll need to bother even telling her you're gone. I figure we can get in, get out, finish this by the afternoon. Yellow-Eyes is probably already gone anyway."

"She's coming with us." Eliot finished the armor and started strapping on weaponry, concealing it beneath the jacket.

There was a pause, and then a sound of indrawn breath. "Eliot, you are _nuts_. She's just a girl."

"She's a Hunter now, she can take it."

Ray had to pause again. "Something you're not telling me?"

Eliot didn't say anything for a second, savouring the moment and trying to relive the fresh, proud memories streaming through his mind. "I was going to save this for a surprise later."

"I'm surprised now. Shoot. You say your little girl's a Hunter now?"

Eliot leaned against the bedroom wall. He put the back of his head up against it, grinning fiercely. "She's gone and blooded herself, Ray. Yesterday I was out hunting a vampire and took her with me."

"Eliot...Holy fu—"

"I barely did anything. Just took her to the scene..." Eliot's grin opened even further at the memory. "She did everything. Talked to the witnesses, worked out it was a vampire, figured out where the nest was...Ray, she even up and beheaded the thing. She's bloody good at it, Ray."

"Well, she had a hell of a father, didn't she."

Eliot's white-toothed grin lost a little of its luster. He got off the door, pulled it open, and headed down the hallway to Irene's room. "Yeah. Did my best."

"You mind if I come in there and congratulate her myself before we get started?"

"Honestly, I was about to invite you in for breakfast anyway." Eliot knocked on Irene's door. "Hey, Irene—"

Irene pulled the door open before he could finish. "Yeah, I heard you from down the hall. We're going for a ride?"

Eliot nodded. "Get your gun."

Eliot Saunders was a dark-haired 47-year-old with gray beginning to show on the edges of his hair. He was just on the short side of average height, but made up for it in fights with a well-toned wiry build and good training. The armor he wore under his clothing was either dark blue or matte black, and aside from the holy symbols and holy water-soaked linings, each piece had only one distinguishing feature: A small insignia that looked almost like a letter 'i' with an eye on top. Beneath it was the phrase 'Tower Corp', and an etched-in bar code.

His daughter Irene was maybe two inches taller. She had an asian slant to her features, raven-black hair that would look good long but was kept clipped so that it didn't go lower than the end of her neck, and a professional-looking hunting knife sheathed on her belt.

By the time Irene had finished pulling on her own working gear, Eliot had already been in the kitchen for about five or ten minutes getting breakfast. As she walked down the hall, Irene could smell the eggs frying, but above the sizzle and pop of breakfast cooking she could hear Raymond and Eliot talking. Without really thinking about what she was doing, Irene began to deliberately slow her walk to hear the end of their conversation.

"—Now, though? We haven't been able to straight-up detect him for _years. _Hell, I figure he even takes steps to ward off our psychics. What's he doing hanging around in Estevan, and how come we know about it?"

"Wish I knew. You think it's a trap?"

"Got to be. Just wish we knew more."

"Well, maybe he's trying to make contact with someone. You know, with one of his..."

The tension seemed to ratchet up. "You think so?" Eliot said finally.

"Why not? It's been twenty years now, right? They're probably coming of age now. Maybe he's checking up."

There was enough of a silence from that that Irene judged it to be the right time to walk in. "Morning Dad. Morning, Uncle Ray. Who's checking up? On what?"

If Irene hadn't known Eliot her whole life, she would have missed the slight tightening of posture before he got himself under control. "Nothing, hon," he said, keeping his gaze focussed on the eggs. "The company's just got some long-term projects it's finally managed to get results out of. We figure the CEO's checking up on them. That's all." And his body language added, _Now please stop asking about it._ Irene decided not to try to pull the truth out of her dad for now.

Raymond got up from where he'd been sitting at the kitchen table, walked up to Irene and put both his hands on her shoulders. "Congratulations, by the way. Eliot told me about the vampire hunt. I'm just sorry I didn't get to see it."

Irene looked away, shrugging. "Not much to see. Bunch of talking and driving around, didn't even really fight it. Just got up behind it without it noticing and beheaded it before it knew what was going on."

Raymond snorted. "Sounds like a job seriously well done to me. By the book, not a single screwup." He jerked a finger towards Eliot. "This guy ever tell you about his first hunt?"

Irene could actually detect her father's frown even though he was five meters away with his back to her. "No. And you're not going to, either."

Raymond glanced at Eliot, evaluating, and then turned back to Irene, lowering his voice theatrically. "So there's this shifter in Brooklyn, right? And—"

"Hey!"

"We track it down by the book and everything, keeping each other in sight the whole time so the bugger can't do the old 'body snatchers' trick. Except six hours in, Eliot decides he needs to pee. He's all private about it, and—"

"Eggs are up. You know, so you can drop this and start eating?"

"I lose sight of him because he goes behind a tree, and when I see Eliot get back it's really the—"

Eliot threw up his hands in surrender. "Look, I'll tell her. Later. You'll be around to listen then, and we can all laugh at the stupid-novice-Hunter story."

"Okay," said Ray. "In fact, I say we go out for beer after the trip and swap first-time stories."

"Done."

They ate in silence, mostly for the sake of speed, and then headed out to Raymond's car. Eliot and Raymond got into the front, with Irene in the back. As they headed out, Eliot turned in his seat and asked, "You ready to hunt a demon, then?"

Irene shrugged. "Far as I know. Can't think of anything else to take."

"I don't mean weapon-wise. They're tricky bastards, not to mention completely evil. Stay on your toes, don't panic, and whatever you do _don't _start hesitating when you're fighting it. They thrive on fear, and they'll exploit whatever leeway you give them."

"Got it." Irene said.

They reached the border between Saskatchewan and North Dakota after around ten more minutes of driving, all of them noticing the slowly-growing tension hanging in the air. Eliot had always called it the _thrill of the hunt, _and despite the fact that she was only experiencing it for the second time Irene had already decided that the name was both somewhat poetic and completely appropriate.

Hey, dad," said Irene, mostly to break the silence, "you bringing your Colt?"

Eliot grinned at her, and opened his coat a little so that Irene could see the holster, specially made for the long barrel of a Colt. Just above the holster was the telltale black carbon fibre-grip handle of a Tower-made weapon. "Of course. You know, I've been waiting to get to use this baby since they handed it over last month."

Ray nodded. "I dunno if you've tried it out yet, but they've got a hell of a kick to them. Practically have to use both hands to hit something."

"He's been practicing in the garage," said Irene.

"You're dad's a lucky man, Irene. Not a lot of Tower employees with one of those. They pass 'em down on the Hunter's twentieth year with the Tower, like a bonus," said Ray. He turned to Eliot as he swung the wheel around for a left turn. "Just make sure there aren't any non-Tower Hunters that see you using it, or they'll start thinking this is the Second Coming and you've got the starring role or something. That bloody gun is a real legend among the freelancers."

Irene frowned. "They don't know about how there's more than one?"

"Nah. Tower secret. We own all the other copies anyway."

Time passed. Eventually Eliot said, "Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why am I lucky, Ray? Because I've finally earned a Colt and I'm going to kick some demonic ass with it, or because you and I are probably the only two Tower Hunters in this state to make it to age forty?"

Raymond thought it over. "Well, little bit of both... But mostly? Because I think your daughter's going to be an even better Hunter than you," Then he grinned. "Hell, maybe she'll even be better than me."


	3. One Little Victory

"Have we got a plan?" Irene asked.

Ray nodded. "There's some standard procedures the Tower likes us to follow. Set a Devil's Trap in a remote and hopefully closed-off location, drive the demon into it, and if we can't kill it on the way there we finish it when we've got it trapped."

There wasn't much talking beyond that. After ten minutes in the car Eliot dialed the go-to number the Tower handed out to the Hunters they had in the field, and spent only thirty seconds on hold before he was transferred to a curt, efficient young woman named Lorie who had a talent for remotely sensing powerful spirits. He was still talking to her fifteen minutes later.

"She says she's getting some weird signals," said Eliot, as they pulled into the town, "but she thinks she has the hang of it."

"What do you mean, 'weird'?" Ray asked, as he parked the car, checking there weren't any passers-by as he did so.

"Dunno. Hang on. What do you mean, 'weird'? Hard-to-find weird, or... Oh. Okay. Thanks." Eliot set the phone down on the top of the car while they unloaded the trunk. "She says he keeps fading in and out, whatever the hell that means," he said. "She figures maybe he's magicked himself with stealth charms that are close to giving out, or maybe he's got enough mental discipline to make himself run silent but he's been having a bad day."

"Well, his day's about to get worse," said Ray, cocking a sawn-off shotgun. After some more thought, he also selected a handgun and a few clips of ornate-looking bullets which resembled inch-high gothic cathedrals. Eliot snorted and turned his attentions back to the phone.

"What are those?" Irene asked, pulling out a couple vials of holy water to stash next to the ones she was already carrying in her jacket.

Ray picked one of the strange-looking bullets up and waved it in front of her face. "These," he said, "are designed to release holy water upon impact."

Irene thought it over. "How come they don't issue water guns?"

Now it was Ray's turn to snort. "Talk to our R&D department. Personally, I just think all those bloody labcoated D&D-loving techies would feel all awkward trying to explain how they spent a 50-thousand-dollar budget on Super Soakers. Oh, and longer range, better accuracy, and never feeling kind of stupid when you try to threaten a demon with it are added bonuses." He examined the contents of the trunk again, and then pulled out another, different type of round.

"Fair enough. And those?"

Ray grinned. "Classified. I'd have to kill you."

"Uh huh."

Ray got off the phone for a second. "She says it's tough, but she has a fix on him. Pemberton Street, two blocks from here. You two ready?"

Irene shrugged. "Are you?" asked Raymond.

Eliot grinned. "Got my Colt, don't I?"

They quickly walked south down a main thoroughfare, few cars or people passing them by in the early morning. It was dead quiet, Ray thought, a good time for a hunt. Tower management was always irked by witnesses.

"So where are we putting that trap?" Irene asked.

"Dunno yet," Ray said, as Eliot continued to interrogate the woman on the other side of the phone. "If we start trying to drive that demon anywhere, it's going to want to stay near people if it doesn't dispossess the host and bolt entirely. Those are both big problems—we can't kill it if it's flying away at fifty miles an hour and we really shouldn't risk a bunch of civilians. Kind of thing we could get fired for."

Irene looked around. "Uncle Ray, it's six in the morning on a saturday. There's almost nobody up."

"Yeah? How many people do you count on the street? If it's more than zero, we could have trouble, Irene. Killing some demon's not worth getting more people killed than absolutely necessary in the process. We want a clean hunt."

Eliot put his hand over the phone speaker as he interrupted. "She says he's fading badly. We need to make some ground."

They jogged until they hit Pemberton, and then tried to slow into the casual walk of normal people. There were three people milling about in the early morning, and Irene caught sight of the demon almost immediately, about a block away from them—the body dressed in worn-out and faded clothes and the shattered face above it grimacing like a carnival mask. The terrible grin that revealed sickly yellowed teeth, the jaggedly unkempt hair that fell behind the head in near-spikes, and the bone-white pallor of the skin all put Irene in mind of a jester, or perhaps a jester's corpse. As the thing jerked its kidnapped head towards her Irene made sure she was staring at some storefront instead. She felt the eyes slide off of her after a second, and then the demon had turned away to keep walking.

"Crap," said Eliot. "Lorie here says she lost it."

"Why don't we just follow it?" said Irene, pointing when she was sure the demon's back was still turned.

Ray and Eliot both frowned, confused. Irene continued with, "Honestly, it's so weird-looking I don't know why everybody else isn't screaming by now—" before her voice shuddered to a halt. She looked back at Eliot and Raymond. Both men still looked confused, but now Raymond's head was tilted into an evaluating look and Eliot's stare held some small measure of fear.

"You can't see it?" Irene asked.

There was a silence. Then, Eliot murmured, "You mean you _can_?"

Ray put a hand on Eliot's shoulder. "So she's psychic. Just another gift in this business, right?"

"It's not _what_ it is, it's _how _she—" Eliot broke off and looked away from either of them, and stopped moving abruptly. This left Ray and Irene to wait awkwardly in the center of the sidewalk, with Eliot between them, seemingly assessing some mote of dust on the pavement. Irene glanced between the retreating demon and her father, beginning to feel a little torn. "Uh...Dad?"

Eliot looked back up and Irene watched him manage to manufacture a small smile. "You can see it? Fine. Hunt it for us. I'll stay with you, Raymond will cut around and try to get ahead of it. Okay?"

Raymond grunted. "Yeah. Fine. Already going." And he was sprinting down a cross-street before the demon could glance back again.

They paced the demon for a couple blocks in silence. Finally, Irene tried, "Dad? Is everything okay?"

Eliot managed another smile. "Everything's just fine, Irene. You're doing fine."

It kept going for two more blocks, turned, and then began to walk down another cross-street, away from the people. Eliot frowned. "Maybe we should pick the pace up," he said. "If he turns like that, he could run into Ray—"

There was a sharp cracking sound and Eliot started running, Irene struggling to keep up. "Gunfire! That'd be Ray," Eliot grunted out.

"Yeah. Figured."

When they got there the demon was on the ground clutching at the left side of his chest, just below his clavicle. The host's blood welled up out of the wound and poured through its hand like it was a sieve. Irene felt her breath catch a little, and steeled herself. _Come on. You're a Hunter now. This is the job._ Ray was a couple feet away with his gun out. He nodded to them when he saw them.

"Hey, El. Figured you might want to try putting this one away yourself with that new toy you've got."

Eliot sidled around the dying man, sizing him up. The host's eyes stayed fixed on the ground. "How come he doesn't just dispossess?"

Ray grinned and held up one of the bullets. It was one of the special ones Irene had asked about. "Thank Tower R&D for that. They've given me some damned stupid equipment over the years, but I'd say this makes up for it."

"Tower dwellers," muttered the demon, and spat, still not looking up. "Company men. You're all bloody pawns."

Raymond laughed. "Hear that? We've got ourselves a hippie demon. You around for Woodstock, pal?"

It said nothing.

Ray laughed again. " Go on, Eliot, slot the bastard."

Eliot shrugged and pulled his Colt out, but hesitated. The demon looked up suddenly and glanced between Irene, Eliot, and the Colt before his eyes settled on Eliot.

"Yeah," said the demon, "Go on. Get _on with it!_" It straightened up and stood wearily, still clutching at its chest, and tried to laugh. The sound that emerged was a half-empty wheeze. "I've had it with all of you. With all of you bloody Tower dwellers. Whatever comes next... it's got to be better. Than you. Lot. So go on, do it. _Do. It._"

Eliot stared at the demon for a moment, and then shrugged. The Colt erupted and blew another wound through the body. The creature stood there for a moment, completely still, and then crumpled to the ground.

Cleanup took only a few minutes, and they were gone before the police arrived.

"Well," said Raymond to Eliot privately, as they walked back to the car, "I don't know what that was about but it sure as hell wasn't Azazel."

"No. I'll tell the Tower about it." Some of the blood had splattered onto his jacket, and Eliot had the stain concealed in such a way that he could try to clean it off while they walked.

"Uh huh. Hey, El? I could use a drink right now."

"See what I can do about that."

"I'm still underage, though," said Irene. "What am I supposed to do, order Pepsi?"

Eliot shrugged. "Nah, I figure you're close enough to 21 by now. I could just order for you, but I got you some great fake ID's last birthday, kid. Use them already."

Irene sighed, annoyed. "Fine, Dad. That's really plausible. So am I an FBI agent going out for a drink, or a coronor, or what?"

"Use the Jane Doe one. Driver's license for a twenty-six-year-old named Rachel Phelps? You brought it, right?"

"Of course. Hey, can I actually drive with it?"

Raymond grunted. "Not in my car, you're not."

And so on, through the awakening day as they drove back into North Dakota looking for a bar. It took some doing to find a place open at 7 A.M. that would serve alcohol, and the bartender had watched them curiously for the first few minutes, but for Ray at least it was worth it to get some alcohol. Within about half an hour of coming in, the drinks had already started to blur what had originally been stark, vivid memories of a cold-blooded killing into a muzzy recollection of yet another job well done. Eliot, after a tense rock-paper-scissors match between him and Raymond, had been declared the designated driver and limited himself to only a half-pint worth. Irene drank even less, and more speculatively. Both of the other Hunters were crashing too hard on the adrenaline high of the hunt to remember it was her first real experience with alcohol.

They swapped first-time stories like Ray had proposed. Eliot naturally went first and managed to give his a better treatment than Ray had with his heavily-abridged version, and got a laugh out Irene for his trouble. Ray went next, and to Eliot's well-contained surprise told Irene the truth. Eliot had been expecting Ray to pull out one of the funnier or more self-aggrandizing hunts that had come later, after he'd joined the Tower. Unlike Eliot's first time, Ray's had been of the more familiar and tragic variety of blooding for a Hunter—barely surviving an attack.

Eliot had been a cop once, a very long time ago. A bachelor's degree in Criminology and a well-honed body had been good enough to get him out on the streets almost immediately as a detective in homicide investigation, and he'd run into Raymond Trissome on a case. Raymond had proven to him that they were dealing with a hoodoo witch rather than a highly resourceful and delusional serial killer, and after Eliot had helped to take her out Raymond had recommended Eliot to the Tower. He'd been apprenticed to Raymond and their first case together was a shifter. End of story.

Raymond, by contrast, had been born and raised a Hunter. His uncle Simon had been a great Hunter when the man had been in his prime—in fact, as far as Eliot knew, Simon was still out wandering familiar US back-roads in search of monsters—and he'd raised up Raymond in the lifestyle. But he'd had to do that because Raymond's parents hadn't been around since Ray was eight.

It had been a werewolf, Eliot heard Raymond say, as the middle-aged Hunter skirted carefully around the part where his parents had been killed so that he wouldn't put Irene completely off her drink. Ray had hid and called Simon the first moment he had thought he was safe, and Simon had arrived minutes later. Ray grinned as he said that, sipping at the bourbon he'd ordered. "He lived fifty miles away. He must have floored it the whole way to get there that fast."

Simon had told him the truth, which probably hadn't been all that easy. He'd told Ray the truth, and then Ray had told him that he wanted to help. So Simon had let the eight-year-old tag along. And when they'd finally trapped it, fortunately while it was in monster form, Raymond was the one who shot it.

"Simon," said Irene musingly in the meditative silence that had followed Ray's story. "Great-uncle Simon? The old guy you introduced me to a couple years back?"

Ray nodded and grinned. "That's the one. He still makes me send him letters about you sometimes, just to tell him how you're doing."

"He always seemed like such a nice person."

Ray nodded. "Well, he is. Just don't ever push him too far."

Eliot's phone suddenly rang. "Damn," he said, and pulled it out to check the caller ID. "Well, I can probably avoid it—"

He read the number, twice. "Or not. Think I'll have to take it in private, too. Give me a couple minutes?"

Raymond shrugged and mock-toasted him. "I think we'll stick around at least that long."

Eliot walked outside and leaned against the bar's front glass window. He spent roughly a second preparing himself for talking with one of the Tower's senior managers before he answered his phone. "Hey Max."

"Hey Eliot. Just finished reading the post-mission report you filed with the remote-sensing support. You sure there weren't any witnesses?"

Eliot snorted. "Is this really what qualifies as small talk for us these days?"

"Sorry man. Just trying to ease into the conversation, here." Eliot heard the sound of Max flipping through the hard-copy of the report. "I'm calling about Irene."

Eliot held his breath. "And? What about her?"

"Easy, El. I just want to fill out some details that seem to be missing. When Lorie lost it, you say that Irene tracked it instead. How?"

Eliot tried to think of a suitable lie and came up empty. He settled for an obfuscation. "She could sense where it was."

More silence, more sounds of flipping pages. Max said, "Very useful talent in a Hunter. I notice you didn't recommend her for employment."

"Because she's not even twenty-one yet."

"I'm sorry, but I don't see how that's a problem. You do know that Ray started with us at eighteen, right?"

"Yes. He told me, once."

"Okay. Look, I'm not trying to pressure you or anything but from what I've heard you're raising her up as a Hunter anyway. You pass her over to us and she can get first-rate gear, any training that she hasn't already gotten from you... It's a better way than freelancing it El. You know that."

"Yeah. I do. I just..."

Max sighed. "I get it. You don't want her growing up that fast. Well, like I said, I'm not pressuring you. I'm just saying that we're very interested in hiring talented Hunters and by the sound of it your girl is one of them. Think about it and get back to me when you can."

"I'll talk to her," said Eliot at last, after spending some time staring at nothing.

"Thank you."

Eliot went back in, sat back down, and waited for Irene and Ray to finish their conversation. When they had, he said, "Irene. The Tower called and they want to hire you. What do you think?"

Her grin told him everything he didn't want to know.


	4. Chasing Shadows

"Dean."

"Mhm."

"Dean, get up."

"Mhm."

"Dean, I'm serious. I think I found a job for us."

"Mh—shit." Dean managed to throw up a hand and block the pillow Sam had thrown at him. "Fine. Fine, all right." He lay in bed for a few precious seconds more and then pulled himself laboriously out and staggered over to the kitchen table. Sam was already there with a newspaper, reading intently. Dean sat down across from him and rested his chin onto his folded hands, waiting. Sam finished the page he was working on, flipped the paper around, and began to read the attachment.

Dean sighed. "Come on, man, don't keep me in suspense here."

"Sorry, I just—take a look."

Dean pulled the offered newspaper in and turned it in his hands until it was the right way up, skimming over the various headlines. Half-asleep though he was, he was still cogent enough to know how to annoy the hell out of his brother. "Oh. 'Dog Saves Baby From River'? Yeah that's great Sam, real supernatural. I can really see us sinking our teeth into this."

"Not the headline, dumbass. Lower corner. 'Turner House Claims Another Victim."

"Oh," said Dean. He shuffled the paper around a little more in his hands as he read. "_Oh._"

Sam leaned back from the table. "Two dead bodies, locked room, no motives, no suspects. And to top it all off the house has been having standard haunted symptoms for years now. Pretty clear-cut, huh?"

"Ain't it just." Dean slammed the newspaper back down and got up from the table, feeling more awake by the second. "Nice work Sammy. Do a little more research, I'll get us some breakfast, we can go in and start checking this case out."

"Think you mean get us some dinner."

Dean scratched his head as he pulled the instant-coffee mix down from a shelf. "Yeah. Night shifts are killing me here. Look, we do this job and then we sleep for like a week straight, all right?"

"Fine by me."

"Cool," said Dean. "There's a McDonald's a mile down the road, right? Guess I'll get us something from there."

"Sure," said Sam from the table. "And...Dean?"

"What?"

"Before you leave, just put some pants on, will you?"

The Tower had a very specific entrance exam for anyone seeking employment. It was a practicum, and any Tower Hunter could judicate. If the Hunter could take out a werewolf, vampire, shifter or, as the legal jargon put it, "destroy or significantly assist in destroying another malignant supernatural entity judged by the judicator of equal or greater difficulty than these examples", they were offered a contract. Over the weekend leading up to Irene's first day as a Tower Hunter, Eliot had been feeling a little leery of the whole idea of putting his daughter into a job that was pretty much the entire definition of 'harm's way', but now that he didn't have a choice about the whole situation he could only feel vaguely proud of the fact that Irene had managed to pass the entrance exam twice.

And he really didn't have a choice anymore. They'd gone into the company office first thing monday morning, and he'd watched his little girl sign her life away. A 10-year contract at minimum, extendable if Irene wanted to stay hired. If she even lived that long.

Eliot watched Irene flip through the mission report, skimming over the pages with a finger. After a while she looked up. "So. Ghost house?"

"You'd think that." Eliot got out of his seat and walked back over to the stove top, pulling seconds out of the batch of stir fry they were having for dinner. "Part of that report mentions a girl hung herself there a couple of years back?"

"Uh." Out of the corner of his eye, Eliot caught the flicker of movement of Irene checking the report. "Oh, yeah. Right here. Elle Thomas?"

"That's the one. She's the only plausible ghost-maker in the house's history." Eliot sat back down and started eating again. "You know, this is really good."

"Thanks Dad. Learn from the best, right?"

"Ha. Anyway, the weird thing about that house is, we already had this. Couple of years back some kids went missing in there. The ghost trapped them in the basement." Eliot grimaced. "She wanted some friends."

"Uh huh."

"Now, the Tower's got some very good intel, so we got there first. A Hunter team went in, wiped out the ghost, and got the kids out of there inside of two hours."

Irene tilted her head at him, grinning a little. "Anybody I know?"

"Yeah, okay, it was me and Raymond. But don't tell him I told you, he'll just figure I was bragging."

"Okay."

"Anyway, Elle's dead and gone. I'm sure about that part. So I honestly don't know what's going on in that house." Eliot wiped his mouth. "I figure you and me and Ray can check this one out. Maybe start tonight, actually. Already got the okay from the regional manager to take on the case."

Irene flipped through the mission report one more time while Eliot got ready to do the dishes. "This hit the news, didn't it."

"Good catch. Yeah, it did." Eliot washed his hands in the sink and got started on the skillet. "I figure we can expect at least a couple freelancers. Whatever you do, don't mention the Tower."

"'Kay."

Eliot finished the skillet off and stacked it on the dishrack. "Hey, Irene?"

"What?" Irene asked distractedly, apparently still looking over the mission report.

"You scared?"

Irene glanced up at last. She took a while to answer. "A little, I guess," she said finally. "But I'm already out of the frying pan, right?"

Eliot frowned at her. "How so?"

"Well... I've been on hunts with you before, Dad. And I know I did really well with that vampire. And I've already helped to take a demon out. Just going after a ghost feels like a step down for me."

"Don't ever start thinking like that, hon. It'll make you cocky. Cocky gets you dead."

"Dad?"

"Mm?"

"Are you scared?"

Eliot stopped what he was doing and looked over at her, at the pretty, raven-haired 20-year-old girl he'd managed to mostly insulate from his reality up until now. He looked into her serene blue eyes and the vague concern in them, while the memories of Azazel in the burning house and statistics of Hunter life expectancy rattled about behind his own.

"Not even a little," Eliot lied.

There was a knock at the door, but Isaac waited until he was finished taking notes on the second body, the girl, before he answered. There were two suited men waiting behind it, and they flashed FBI badges at him for just long enough for him to see they were authentic.

"Agent Thomas Kovacs, agent Fred Murphy," said the shorter one. "If you'd step aside, sir, we'd like to see the bodies."

"Oh," said Isaac. "Uh... of course."

He shuffled back and sat down in his desk in the corner of the room, waiting awkwardly, while the agents inspected the bodies. Muttered conversation passed between them every few seconds, and after a while Isaac turned back to his documentation.

"Police report said they were stabbed," said "Thomas", out of the silence.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's right." There were two corpses lying on the examination table in the center of the room, and Isaac moved over to the boy, who was closer. He lifted the right arm and gestured. "See? Knife wound, right there in the armpit." He lowered the arm, and waited for a reply from either agent. One of them pulled up the arm as he had, and made a wry little grunt, but said nothing else.

"The size of the wound and the ease of penetration through the muscle tissue suggests a very sharp blade weapon, length at somewhere around a foot," said Isaac, trying to be helpful. "As well, the placement of the wounds—"

Another knock at the door. The FBI agents exchanged glances.

"I'll get that," said Isaac.

This time, it was two men and a woman. "I'm agent Carl Mendez," the taller man began, starting to raise his badge, and then seemed to notice the room already had occupants and stopped abruptly. "Who are you guys?"

"FBI," said the one introduced as Fred, deadpan.

The man raised his eyebrows, but nodded an affirmation. "Okay. Fair enough." He began to raise his badge again, and then made a show of glancing at it. "Shit, that's my fishing license," he said, grinning. "Too many cards to carry, you know how it is."

Isaac did not, but gestured that he did.

Carl seemed preoccupied with finding the right license, so the woman took over. "Anyway," she said, "I'm Rachael Thetis, this is Carl Mendez, and the agent to my right is Nigel Huff. We're CIA, and we're here to see the bodies."

"Oh, okay," said Isaac. "As a matter of fact, I was just going over some of the subtler details of the wounds." He moved back to the bodies, half just to let the CIA agents in. After they'd clustered around the bodies as well, Isaac began again.

"As you can see, the placements of the wounds were very precisely chosen. The boy was disabled with a blow under the arm and into the axillary artery, causing fatal blood loss. The girl appears to have fought a little—note the superficial wounds here and here?—but was ultimately taken down with a stab directly into the heart."

Rachael moved around the table to look at the wounds, pushing Fred and Thomas aside as she did. "Clean hits," she said, sounding almost impressed. "And very little tear in the muscle tissue. The man knew where to strike and he had a good weapon."

"Uh, yes," said Isaac.

"Is there anything else worth mentioning that you found?" Fred asked. Rachael and Carl both half-turned to look at him, and he stared them down until they turned away again.

"A couple oddities, actually. Hang on..." Isaac scanned through his notebook until he found it. "Right. The blade's entry angle was such that it was headed towards the clavicle, and impacted. The blade didn't break or chip, exactly, but you know how a knife can get scratched on hard surfaces and, sometimes, leave a few flecks of metal behind?"

Everyone else in the room nodded emphatically.

"Well, it scratched the bone. I took some samples. The knife was silver."

"Well, then," said Thomas, into the silence.

There was more to it than that—a long list of questions closer to FBI/CIA standards, careful notetaking of forensic details that none of the Hunters really cared about, a pretense towards networking with the precinct that neither group would follow up on and had only talked about in order to dull suspicion and lessen chances of being tracked down and charged with impersonating a US officer of the law. But everyone in the room with the exception of Isaac waited through it with well-faked calm and a hint of boredom, waiting for it to be over.

"Busy day, isn't it?" said Isaac as he showed them out. Nobody laughed.

"Can a ghost hold silver?" asked Irene, as they walked back to the car.

"Dunno," said Eliot. Raymond added, "Tower R&D probably knows. They've got databases on this stuff."

On the other side of the lot, Sam was pulling the Impala's passenger door open. "We'll have to ask Bobby if ghosts can wield silver," he was saying.

"Yeah. Bobby'll know."

As they drove off:

"So... Hunters?"

"What, those 'CIA' guys?"

"Uh huh."

Yeah. Oh, yeah."


End file.
